All of our programs are integrated into our on-going flagship project, Somos Diferentes, Somos Iguales (SDSI, Spanish for We're Different, We're Equal ), which combines popular media with multi-sector alliances, local capacity building, and leadership training.
Television
The backbone of SDSI is the award-winning youth-focused “social soap” TV series Sexto Sentido (Spanish for Sixth Sense), which takes on topics in sexual and reproductive health that are often considered taboo, personalizing them in stories that reflect the problems, decisions, triumphs, and challenges of a group of young Nicaraguans. Upon first airing in Nicaragua in 2001, Sexto Sentido quickly rose to #1 in its timeslot, and nine of ten young people interviewed knew of the series. Our most recent evaluation revealed that six out of ten had regularly watched at least two of the last three seasons.
In 2004, Sexto Sentido, along with HBO Films, received a special SHINE (Sexual Health in Entertainment) Award for Excellence for its contribution to adolescent sexual and reproductive health. More recently, the program was showcased in a Discovery Channel special about HIV prevention featuring actresses Ashley Judd and Salma Hayek. Also, one of our episodes was a top winner in the prestigious 2007 Iberoamerican Educational TV and Film Contest. Since 2005, Sexto Sentido's reach has been extended through broadcast on major TV channels in Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico, and the United States.
Watch Sexto Sentido (subtitled in English)
Watch Sexto Sentido (in Spanish)
Building on Sexto Sentido 's success, we are currently developing a new TV drama series for regional and international broadcast. Tres Familias (Spanish for Three Families) will follow the lives of three families as they confront the positive and negative economic, social, political and cultural effects of globalization in the increasingly international tourist town of Granada, Nicaragua. Through the lens of our characters' lives and relationships, we will take on the complexity of unintended and unwanted pregnancies across generations within the same family; microcredit and microfinance and its impact on family relationships; sexual exploitation, trafficking; economic migration; sexuality, identity, and masculinity; young women's leadership; violence; sexually transmitted infections; and abortion, among other topics. Like Sexto Sentido, Tres Familias will also promote the importance of support networks, mutual respect, and negotiation as a means of conflict resolution.
Radio
Our popular youth-talk radio program, SSRadio, mixes educational entertainment, music, active youth audience participation, and debate on its nightly show. An estimated 25,000 young people tune in regularly through 11 local stations in Nicaragua, and many more listen live or via streaming audio on the Internet. This year the show will go regional through the SSRadio Central American Young Correspondents' Network, which formed in 2007.
Listen to Sexto Sentido Radio (in Spanish)
Magazine
Our quarterly women's magazine La Boletina, now the largest circulation magazine in Nicaragua, is widely considered the country's foremost publication about women's movement issues. It is distributed to more than 1,000 women's groups by a volunteer network, and is read online by tens of thousands of people internationally.
Read La Boletina (in Spanish)
Capacity and Alliance Building
The impact and reach of our mass media is complemented and reinforced by other targeted media, training, and networking activities, such as cast tours to schools and community groups to discuss the issues brought up in the series and cross-promotional campaigns with local health and social service providers. Our training activities offer women and young people face-to-face opportunities to discuss the ways in which the issues addressed in our media affect their daily lives and to think about ways they can collectively solve related problems in their own communities. Our annual Central American Youth Leadership Camp, for example, has become a well-known magnet for grassroots young leaders throughout Central America. Our materials and DVD educational packs, based on Sexto Sentido and designed for local groups, are being used by hundreds of such groups in both cities and rural areas to work on issues related to HIV, sexual abuse, emergency contraception, domestic violence, and more.
Our training activities and participation in national and regional social movements allow us to maintain a network of collaborative relationships with hundreds of media, community, governmental and nongovernmental organizations, and youth- and women-friendly service providers in Nicaragua and throughout Central America, as well as with international non-profit organizations from all over the world.
More About Capacity and Alliance Building (in Spanish)
SIDOC
SIDOC is an on-sight information center and online database composed of articles, methodological materials, magazines, and videos. It consists of over 11,000 titles in 51 topical categories, including social movements, human rights, identity, media, health, and other regional issues. By the end of 2006, over 10,000 documents were downloaded from SIDOC every month.
Go to SIDOC Online (in Spanish)
Research, Learning, and Evaluation
Our Research, Learning, and Evaluation program conducts research about gender and generational issues and monitors and evaluates Puntos’ work. Our researchers are intimately tied to the content of our media, providing input information about a range of topics and participating in the scriptwriting process for our media programs. Our research team also conducts original formative research for publication on issues such as abortion, women’s economic rights, gender relations, and violence, and monitors and evaluates institutional activities.
